ABSENT PRESENCES

Abstract

Edward Kelley has generally had a bad press. Frances Yates dismisses him as “a fraud who deluded his pious master”,¹ Charlotte Fell-Smith describes him as “an adventurer” with an “uncontrollable nature and overbearing ways”.² The generally accepted version of the Dee-Kelley relationship, based on Weever’s Discourse of ancient Funeral Monuments,³ sees Kelley as devious and fraudulent, a version borne out by the narrative offered in the True & Faithful Relation, with Meric Casaubon’s polemical preface that provides accounts of quarrels between the two men, Kelley’s temper tantrums and ungodly behaviour, his obsession with money and his generally volatile behaviour, that contrasts with Dee’s apparent steadfastness. But the problem with this version of events is that if Kelley is cast in the role of the deceiver, then Dee must be cast in the role of the deceived. Peter French sums up the dilemma quite well, as he considers the history of the summoning of spirits as related by Dee and by subsequent historians: